and thus contributed to the development of production.[1]
The triumph of the Revolution astonished nearly all its contemporaries, and it seems that the most intelligent, the most deliberate, and the best informed as regards political matters, were the most surprised; this was because reasons drawn from theory could not explain this paradoxical success. It seems to me that even to-day the question is scarcely less obscure to historians than it was to our ancestors. The primary cause of this triumph must be sought in the economic progress of the time; it is because the Old Régime was struck by rapid blows, while production was making great strides, that the contemporary world was born with comparatively little labour, and could so rapidly be assured of a vigorous life.
We possess, on the other hand,, a dreadful historical experience of a great transformation taking place at a time of economic decadence; I mean the victory of Christianity and the fall of the Roman Empire which closely followed it.
All the old Christian authors agree in informing us that the new religion brought no serious improvement in the situation of the world; corruption, oppression, and disasters continued to crush the people as in the past. This was a great disillusion for the fathers of the Church; at the time of the persecutions the Christians had believed that God would overwhelm Rome with favours on the day that the Empire ceased to persecute the faithful; now the Empire was Christian, and the bishops had become personages of the first rank, yet everything continued to go on as badly as in the past. What was still more disheartening, the immorality, so often
- ↑ Kautsky has dwelt very strongly on the role played by the treasures which the French armies took possession of (La Lutte des classes en France en 1789, French trans., pp. 104–106).
